There are more galaxies in the Universe than even Carl Sagan ever imagined
Forget billions and billions. When it comes to the number of galaxies in the Universe, both theorists' and observers' estimates are too low.
bigthink.com
The Universe, no matter how we conceive or misconceive of it, cannot hide its truths when faced with superior data.
- If you take the deepest image ever created of the distant Universe, the Hubble eXtreme Deep Field, and extrapolate over the whole sky, you'd estimate there were ~170 billion galaxies in the observable Universe.
- A detailed theoretical simulation predicted far more faint, small galaxies than we've seen, upping the expected total to closer to 2 trillion.
- But recent observational evidence shows that even that estimate is far too low. Instead, there are between 6 and 20 trillion galaxies out there. Carl Sagan's "billions and billions" was far too low of a guess.
